Singapore’s largest telecoms provider, SingTel, plans to set aside $1.6 billion (S$2 billion) over the next three years for startup acquisitions, according to ZDNet. Like those it has made in recent years, these are expected to be in the digital media space.

All of these can be tracked back to the major restructuring of SingTel’s business arms last year, where it divided itself into three pillars called Consumer, ICT and Digital Life.

The first two focus on consumer and enterprise segments, respectively, but the Digital Life arm is most representative of the change. The division was set up as a reaction to over-the-top competition from third party content providers, and SingTel said Digital Life was going to compete head on, providing smart TV, digital magazines and local content.

Some of acquisitions so far include restaurant review sites, Hungrygowhere and Eatability, and photo app Pixable.

SingTel has also been bullish as a VC. In 2010, it set up a separate venture arm called Innov8 to specifically look at acquisitions that would boost its current play in the telecoms arena. Innov8 was set up with an initial fund size of $160 million (S$200 million), and has since acquired firms like mobile ad company Amobee.

Innov8 has also raised rounds in startups like mobile ad exchange Nexage and Chinese game publisher Yodo.

SingTel runs telecoms operations in other countries in the region, like Optus in Australia. It has significant stakes in other carriers like Globe in The Philippines (44 percent), Bharti in India (32 percent) and Telkomsel in Indonesia (35 percent). Altogether, its operations in the region cover about 400 million mobile subscribers.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Pinterest is ramping up its international strategy by kicking off a localisation effort in the U.K. today, tweaking the site so that it deliberately foregrounds U.K. content to U.K. users and also adding a British English language setting to make Brits feel more at home. The U.K. is the first part in what appears to be a bigger strategy to target more usage, and more users, outside of the U.S., with France likely to be the next country to get the localizing treatment, according to a spokeswoman.

We’ve asked Pinterest if it is conducting parallel localisation efforts in other global markets and will update this story with any response. Update: “Pinterest does feel like it’s just getting started with its localisation efforts and with the UK being the first international effort the team is hoping to learn a lot from it, in order to inform how they reach out to communities in other countries. France is likely to be next but Pinterest is waiting to finalise these details until after they’ve learned more from the UK,” the spokeswoman said.

The company is not currently breaking out user numbers, but according to one estimate Pinterest had some 40 million users as of February this year.

Back in February Pinterest raised $200 million in Series D funding – with “international growth” pegged as one of the growth-oriented initiatives that the money would be used for. Last year it also picked up a $100 billion investment from Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten – a further sign of its international ambitions. While in March this year, Pinterest rolled out a design refresh, adding bigger pictures and more discovery features worldwide.

It also rolled out a web analytics product to make it easier for businesses to track referrals and measure what users are doing on the site. Today’s localisation efforts reinforce  that effort by encouraging greater user engagement — and driving engagement is likely to be key to helping the social network generate revenues some day.

Here’s how the company explained the U.K.-specific site changes in an email sent to TechCrunch:

…more UK Pinners and pins will be suggested to UK users on the site. Also, when a new person in the UK joins Pinterest, they’ll now see other Pinners in the UK. In addition, search results will feature more UK content. Finally, Pinterest is making sure that people in the UK can access the service in British English. We’re hoping this will lead to more British pinners discovering things they love on Pinterest.

In addition to these U.K.-specific site customisations, the visual social network/content discovery site is also kicking off a dedicated community event — using the hashtag #PinitforwardUK – in a bid to raise its local profile.

The Pin It Forward UK initiative, which also kicks off today, will be used to spread the word about the new, U.K.-flavoured Pinterest. The company has recruited 30 bloggers to post Pinterest-related blogs over the next 30 days to “celebrate their passion” — or rather explain how to use Pinterest to post blogs and, through that, hopefully reel in more British eyeballs.

Each day 10 or so bloggers will post about their passion, describe how they express it on Pinterest, and introduce the set of bloggers for the next day. Long-time UK pinner, Will Taylor, from Bright.Bazaar today started things off with a guest post on the Pinterest Blog. Pinterest will be promoting Pin It Forward UK on its blog, social channels (using #PinItForwardUK) and will also be featuring the best boards as part of the Pinterest Weekly emails.

Pinterest said the U.K.-specific site customisations are a “first step” in its effort to improve the experience for U.K. users, and are the result of feedback it has received from U.K. users.

Bright.Bazaar’s Taylor’s introductory blog on the Pin It Forward UK campaign explains that the site never officially launched in the U.K. — rather it was switched on globally and allowed to grow organically — adding that the idea behind the campaign is therefore to “make Pinterest feel more natural, welcoming and interesting to local audiences”.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Rocket Internet, the Samwer brothers’ Berlin-based incubator that runs a vast global empire of e-commerce startups, is picking up a new, sizeable investor in Brazil. The Cisneros Group, the Latin American media powerhouse that owns TV, digital, and other assets, is investing up to $20 million in Mobly, a Brazil-based home furnishings site. Victor Kong, chief digital officer of the Cisneros Group and head of its Cisneros Interactive division, says that the first $10 million is coming now, with the company reserving the right to bump that up to $20 million within the year, with the door also open for investing in other Rocket Internet operations along the way.

The Cisneros Group becomes the fourth investor in Mobly, which has also had investment from the Samwers, along with regular Rocket Internet investors Kinnevik and JP Morgan. This latest round of investment will see Moby expanding from Brazil to other countries in the region, leveraging the Cisneros TV and advertising networks to help promote it. It looks like before now there was around $25 million invested in the site, and it has a pre-money valuation of $108 million.

“This acquisition is part of our commitment to diversify and strengthen our network of digital businesses in the areas of e-commerce and digital advertising,” Adriana Cisneros de Griffin, cheif strategy office and vice chairperson of Cisneros, noted in a statement. “Mobly is ready to break into the traditional market sales of furniture and home decor and extend its dominance in Latin America because it has the best selection of high quality goods and customer service and delivery that is known for its excellence.”

This is Cisneros’ first investment not just in a Rocket Internet company, but in a home furnishings site. It’s a lateral move for a company better known as the largest privately-held media company in Latin America, which includes TV assets and RedMas, an online ad network that is Yahoo’s partner in the region. Kong says this is because of a new strategy on the part of the company, spearheaded by Cisneros scion Adriana.

“Adriana is a third-generation Cisneros taking control of the company and I can see her pushing the company forward more here,” says Kong. Other non-media assets include Tropicalia, an eco-friendly real estate operation in the Dominican Republic, where Adriana is CEO. Cisneros’ other e-commerce investments include daily deals site Cuponidad, Latin American-focused crowdfunding site Idea.me.

Kong notes that when a media company in today’s world is thinking about the move to digital and how that will affect its future, e-commerce inevitably will come into the equation. That’s something that others like Conde Nast have also been exploring with their e-commerce investments.

“Adriana’s big question is, what is this company going to look like in 10 years? We all know what is happening with the move to tablets and phones, so we need to be more innovative and move into new spaces,” Kong says.

While the idea of a media company becoming a furniture site investor seems like a leap in one regard, in another it’s actually a no-brainer investment.

Like other countries in the BRIC bloc, Brazil is seeing a rapid growth of its middle class, and a big boom in e-commerce. Brazil, says Kong, accounts for 65% of all e-commerce in the region. Sales in the country grew by 20% in 2012, with home decorating the fastest-growing category.

A site like Mobly, with its emphasis on cost-friendly home furnishings, plays right into that. The site was founded 18 months ago and in 2012, its total revenue was $89.5 million. Now, it sees over $8 million dollars in sales each month, with that number growing rapidly, Kong notes. Like other e-commerce sites, Mobly’s strength comes in the ability to offer consumers a large range of stock, with more than 45,000 SKUs, according to Kong, on offer at any time. Unlike some of Rocket’s other investments into new markets, this one is led by a local team rather than transplants from the Samwers’ German HQ. The three Brazilian co-founders, Victor Noda, Marcelo Marques and Mario Fernandes, as also all co-presidents.

“This is our biggest move into ecommerce so far, but hopefully there will be more to come,” Kong says. He says that Brazil, being the largest e-commerce market in the region, will remain a key focus. As for what may come next for Cisneros, other Rocket holdings in Brazil include sporting goods site Kanui, private shopping club for home goods Westwing, fashion site Dafiti, and discount site CupoNation, among several others.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Bill Gurley, a general partner at one of Silicon Valley’s top tier venture firms Benchmark Capital, said that the late-stage market is the “most frothy” he’s ever seen since the late 1990s.

Even though Facebook, Groupon and Zynga shares are still all underperforming relative to where they debuted at in their IPOs, growth-stage investors are still pouring capital into later-stage companies.

“The late-stage private market continues to be the most frothy thing I’ve seen since the late 1990s,” he said on-stage in an interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. “I thought it was going to go away when you had these IPOs trading at fractions of the opening price, but if you have a company that people have selected as the ‘chosen one,’ you’ve got people knocking on your door.”

Gurley said this has more to do with the supply of capital than the supply of companies. Basically, a lot of new participants like hedge funds have moved into late-stage funding, while other competing VC firms have scaled up with big growth funds.

“Historically, this has been shown over time to be a bad thing,” he said. If companies take on generous amounts of funding, they may feel pressure to spend a lot of that on marketing.

At the same time, the availability of growth funding on private markets may tempt companies to keep postponing an IPO past the point where they might miss their window if growth slows.

Notably, Benchmark elected not to do a growth fund. When they raised for their seventh fund back in 2011, they raised $425 million plus $80 million for a “Founders Fund.”

“We want to be an artisan business,” he said. He said when the firm tried to do a European fund a decade ago, they found that they were spending too much time managing offices in other countries. They even missed a deal when Gurley punted a company to a European partner and the founder felt insulted that he was passed off. That European arm is now Balderton Capital and Gurley adds, “They’ve done fine and they’ve had IPOs. We just found that we were spending less time doing what we love to do, which is help entrerepeneurs build great companies.”

On the totally opposite end of the market, there’s a dearth of capital for seed-stage companies that want to progress to a Series A round.

“There were so many new angel-funded companies. It’s like pushing a pig being pushed through a python — when something big gets caught in a narrow system,” he said. “Some of them are getting funded and some are finding other ways to wind down.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook video ad units could come with TV price tags – Facebook is reportedly prepping to sell its new video ads with an “upfront”-type marketplace and TV-like prices. According to AdAge, Facebook will have four daily summer slots — women over 30, women under 30, men over 30 and men over 30 — with an asking price close to $1 million. The exact ad format hasn’t been locked down, but it is believed that the videos will be 15-seconds long and users will see no more than three per day at launch. It is unclear whether the ads will autoplay in the feed or not.

More Messenger for Android users get free calling - Facebook this week released an update for its Messenger app on Android, bringing free VoiP calling to users in the U.S. and 23 other countries. Previously, this was in testing with Android users in Canada and iOS users in several countries. From Messenger, users can tap the “i” button inside a conversation and then select “Free Call.”

Facebook simplifies logo – Facebook has updated the look of its “f” logo, eliminating the light blue horizontal line, which was in the previous version. A comparison is available here on the site of developer Tom Waddington, who first noticed the change. The company also created new logos for several of its Facebook pages, such as those for security, privacy, government, journalists, universities and others. The one for safety, for example, accompanies the roundup item below.

Facebook and Attorneys General launch online safety campaign- Facebook and the National Association of Attorneys General are partnering to educate teens and their parents about safety and privacy on the social network. Part of the consumer education program includes a ”Safety and Privacy on Facebook” page, which will be a resource for information and tips on privacy settings and “Ask the Safety Team” videos.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

E-commerce giant Amazon looks like it is gearing up for the latest chapter in its international expansion: an operation in Russia. According to this article in Forbes (in Russian) the company has opened its first office in the country, headed by Arkady Vitrouk. Vitrouk is the former general director of ABC-Atticus, a publishing group owned by media barron Alexander Mamut.

Forbes cites unnamed sources but notes that the appointment, and the office opening, have not been confirmed by Amazon itself. However, Vitrouk’s LinkedIn profile does confirm his as director of Kindle Content for Amazon in Russia.

It looks like right now Amazon is hiring for at least three other positions for Russia specifically for its Kindle business and the sourcing of local content: a senior product manager for Kindle content pricing, and a principal for content acquisition for Kindle Russia, and another content acquisition manager.

A visit to amazon.ru currently redirect’s to the company’s main page for Europe, with links to other countries’ local sites, including the UK, France, Spain, German and Italy. We have contacted Amazon and Vitrouk himself for more detail and will update this story as we learn more.

The news comes in the same week that Amazon announced that it would take its Appstore business international — extending it to nearly 200 countries, another sign of how the company is gearing up for more scale.

Russia is currently Europe’s largest internet market, according to a recent study from comScore, with an online audience of 61.3 million users.

That, combined with Russia’s rapidly rising middle class, has led to a boom in e-commerce. Morgan Stanley believes the Russian e-commerce market will be worth $36 billion by 2015, up from $12 billion in 2012.

Russia has been a noticeable hole in Amazon’s footprint, but that has spelled opportunity for local players, too.

Ozon — commonly called the “Amazon of Russia” — has raised $121 million in funding and has been building up a very Amazon-like business. That includes an extensive logistics network to deliver a soup-to-nuts range of goods. As we’ve pointed out before this is especially important in a country like Russia, which didn’t have an excellent pre-existing delivery infrastructure. That, and the lack of credit card penetration, has meant that companies like Ozon and fashion/home goods site KupiVIP (itself flush with $120 million of funding) have built out fleets of their own delivery trucks, with drivers who take cash on delivery for goods (KupiVIP, focusing on clothes, will even wait until the recipient tries something on, so that it can also get returned on the spot).

Like Amazon, Ozon has also been eyeing up a move into cloud services. Unlike Amazon, Ozon’s strategy has yet to include any products or services like Amazon’s Kindle operation.

This is where Amazon could come in. In another BRIC market, Brazil, Amazon has been building out a business based on its non-physical goods — Kindle books and Kindle devices.

This could be one route to how Amazon decides to tackle Russia, at least in part. In that sense, it’s interesting that the Forbes report specifically names as the head of Amazon in Russia someone whose immediate experience lies precisely in publishing, rather than e-commerce or retail, and that he’s already heading up business for the company there in that vein.

P.S. I write “at least in part,” because it turns out that it’s also hiring for other Russia-related expansion plans as well. Online fashion e-commerce site Shopbop, owned by Amazon, is seeking a marketing manager for a new rollout it is planning in Russia. Amazon has also been headhunting in Moscow for software engineers — although these would be for relocation to Seattle.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook has started to expand its Gifts product beyond the U.S., according to users in the U.K., India and Canada who say they got access to the service this weekend. However, it seems that international users can only send gifts to their friends who live in the U.S.

Facebook launched Gifts in September 2012 as a way for users to buy physical and digital gifts for their friends via desktop or mobile. The product rolled out to all U.S. users by mid-December, but hadn’t been available in other countries until now.

U.K. reader Matt Navarra sent us this screenshot of his Facebook homepage on Saturday. Inside Network contributer Pete Davison says he saw a similar prompt about Gifts today.

From the Gifts dashboard, users will see a note that they can send gifts to their friends and family in the U.S., Navarra says. Majestic Media Managing Director Mario Zelaya tells us he’s able to access the same dashboard from Canada.

Pravin Jadhav tweeted about Gifts launching in India on Friday.

Smart! Starbucks comes to India. Facebook launches gifts in India. Now you can gift Starbucks Coupons to friends on Facebook.

— Pravin (@beingpractical) April 5, 2013

Like in the U.K. and Canada, Gifts in India can only be sent to users in the U.S., according to reports from MediaNama and Techcircle.in.

This expansion increases the potential audience for this new monetization channel. So far, Gifts seems to be growing slowly. Facebook made $5 million from non-game payments in Q4 2012, a portion of which came from Gifts, but CFO David Ebersman said that user-promoted posts were the primary source of that revenue. Ebersman said he expected Gifts to continue to represent a small percentage of Facebook’s overall business as the company experiments with the design and functionality of the product. Facebook is due to report its first quarter earnings of this year on May 1.

Allowing users to buy gifts for their friends outside of the U.S. is a greater challenge. In November, the company added a job listing for a customs and trade manager, which could be related to making Gifts available more globally. That position is still listed on Facebook’s careers site. Another job focused on strategic partner development for Gifts is also available.

Facebook hasn’t responded to our requests for more information.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Sometimes the smallest, most mundane tasks are the things you really dread — and put off for weeks. Like booking an oil change for your car, or finding a nice play for an anniversary date and buying tickets, or finding a good dentist in a new city and scheduling an appointment. It’s stuff that any patient person with internet access and a cell phone can do, but takes up just enough time and mental energy that it can be a huge drag.

That’s why wealthy people have personal assistants. And lately, that’s why I’ve been using Fancy Hands.

As we’ve written before, Fancy Hands is a three-year-old NYC-based startup that lets you book a personal assistant to complete tasks for a flat fee, ranging from $25 for 5 tasks a month, to $65 for 25 requests per month. Unlike TaskRabbit and Exec, Fancy Hands isn’t for tasks that need to be completed in person, like picking up dry cleaning. Its team of personal assistants are all based in the United States, but distributed throughout the country — armed with patience, web-searching skills, and phone lines, they get paid to do all the research and “desk errands” that can really drag you down.

Fancy Hands for iOS

And today, Fancy Hands is set to become even more, well, handy: It’s launching its first-ever native app for the iPhone. Up until now, Fancy Hands has been available only as an app in the web browser, as well as through email and phone (you could leave a voice message with a task assignment.)

One of the coolest features with Fancy Hands for iOS is that it lets you book a new request button by either typing it or speaking it (there’s a cute “Talkie” animation that moves its lips when you do.) This is all a custom-built technology, not a Siri integration, Fancy Hands founder Ted Roden tells me. The key here is that bad computer transcription is not a worry, since a human will actually be listening to your request.

Another very cool baked-in new feature is that the Fancy Hands app suggests tasks for you, incorporating your location, calendar, weather, date, and most importantly your task history. This gets the service even closer to what I’d imagine it’d be like to have a real-life, full time personal assistant. “Looks like it’s your grandparents’ anniversary in three days; shall I send flowers?” Yes, please.

New kinds of tasks

Naturally, the mobile experience also ties in photos more seamlessly — so you can take a photo of a “for sale” sign on a car and ask Fancy Hands to make a call and get details about the vehicle, for instance.

Roden says that growth has been solid so far, with users across all continents except Antarctica and 60 hours’ worth of pure phone calls being completed by assistants every day (I hate being on the phone for even 5 minutes, so God love all those people.) The big move into mobile could certainly accelerate that, since it optimizes for people who don’t have the time to even type their tasks.

“We’re seeing a lot more tasks that are related to being out and about, like ‘I’m on vacation in NYC and we thought the Union Square green market was open today, doesn’t appear to be, find out when it is,’” Roden says.

The human element

There is a whole wave of apps promising to turn your phone into a personal assistant, and some of those are certainly exciting. But what I love about Fancy Hands is that there are actually people at the other end of this one, living in the United States and making money (and doing things that only humans can really do.) Some of Fancy Hands’ more closely-related competitors, such as GetFriday, are primarily staffed with assistants based in other countries.

Plus, when I show up to my dentist’s office and the receptionist tells me she’s “spoken to my assistant,” I feel pretty darn fancy.

Fancy Hands, which has a full-time staff of nine, has raised $1 million in funding from Betaworks, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, and others.

Check out the new app here. And here are more screenshots:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

We’re fast approaching Disrupt NY, TechCrunch’s big conference in the Big Apple taking place April 29-May 1 at the Manhattan Center. This year’s event promises to be one of the most international yet, with the Startup Alley featuring three country pavilions, focusing on Brazil, India and Israel, and we’re on the lookout for exciting startups from these three countries and the rest of the world to be a part of the action.

Startup Alley is the boisterous, buzzy complement to what happens on Disrupt’s main stage, with its usual lineup of killer speakers and the Startup Battlefield. The Alley is where people mingle, scope out and network; and with a daily, rotating list of startups exhibiting in the Alley, it’s the perfect platform for our country spotlights.

Brazil, India and Israel are without question three of the world’s most important tech hubs outside of Silicon Valley. With their supersized populations of digital consumers, Brazil and India typify some of the most exciting elements of emerging economy market growth. And while Israel is significantly smaller, it provides an anchor for what is happening in the wider Middle East/north African region.

But it’s not just a simple numbers game: all three countries are also pushing the envelope on some of the coolest innovations in technology and engineering.

This combination of these two currents is driving a lot of activity that is increasingly helping the three countries gain an international profile in terms of new business and investment.

For the India pavilion, TechCrunch is teaming up with the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI); and Initial:Capital will be bringing startups from Israel and Brazil to the event. If you are a startup from one of these three places, less than two years old and with under $2.5 million in funding, the Pavilions at Disrupt NY are your chance to shine and show off how you are prime examples of why your countries are forces to be reckoned with in the tech world.

For more details on applying to one of the Pavilions, go here for Brazil, here for India and here for Israel.

But wait! There’s more!

In addition to these three country pavilions, we’re still accepting applications for qualifying startups from anywhere to come and show off their stuff by applying to exhibit in the wider Startup Alley itself. (As with the pavilions, you need to be less than two years old and have less than $2.5 million in funding.)

Everyone in the Alley, including the Pavilions, gets a cocktail table to demo for one day. Those who exhibit in the Alley get two tickets for the entire 3-day event and afterparties, and a chance to compete for the Audience Choice Award — a fast track to joining the Battlefield to present your startup on the main stage and compete for the $50,000 grand prize.

We’re especially excited about the international pavilions for a couple of reasons. We love the idea of showcasing how the startup world is about a lot more than just what’s happening in Silicon Valley — something that those of us who live outside the Bay Area know well but often feel is under-represented in wider tech discourse (and all the business that goes along with that).

This is not a fleeting idea. It’s something we’ve been pushing hard in our U.S. city tours in the past year, and it’s equally an important trend worldwide. This is a large part of why we’re launching a new Disrupt event this year — pointedly, in another major hub for tech startups outside of the U.S.: Berlin, Germany. That will be taking place 26-29 October, and we’re laying the groundwork already. Go here if you want to get involved.

Accelerators, VCs and industry/government associations who would like to partner with us and bring a group of startups either to Disrupt NY or Disrupt Berlin, please email Jamie Quiocho.

Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our amazing sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google, the world’s largest search engine and one of the most powerful tech companies around, is now using its muscle to search for something new: social entrepreneurs. Today, the company is announcing the Global Impact Challenge, a new prize that will award £2 million ($3 million) between four non-profit startups based in the UK that are using technology for social good in areas like education, economic development, health, environment and community service. Judges for the award include Tim Berners-Lee, Richard Branson, and we the people via a public vote. If successful, the prize could serve as a template for future social enterprise competitions in other countries.

“Today we’re starting the hunt in the UK, but we also know that nonprofits all over the world are using techy approaches to develop new solutions in their sector,” writes Jacquelline Fuller, director of Google Giving, in a blog post. “Who knows, the Global Impact Challenge might head your way next.”

Applications for the award open today, with the deadline April 17. A Google team will make the first cut down to 10 finalists in May, at which point the public will vote for favorites, also being given a chance to make donations directly to each shortlisted project. Then, in June, Berners-Lee, Branson, Fuller and the other judges — Jilly Forster (social campaigns PR supremo) and Matt Brittin (Google’s VP for Northern and Central Europe) — will cast their votes for three winners, with the fourth coming from the public vote. Each winner will get £500,000; each of the 10 finalists will also each be getting 10 Chromebooks — a generous contribution for a startup non-profit.

“The Web’s contribution to economic progress has been much celebrated, but I believe that we are only scratching the surface of its potential to solve social and political problems,” said Berners-Lee in a statement. “On behalf of the World Wide Web Foundation, I’m delighted to join Google in this exciting and innovative initiative.”

The final four winners will also receive assistance from Google to get their projects off the ground. This could run from mentoring through to technical assistance — and potentially more, since some Googlers could even get involved as part of their GoogleServe program, which encourages all employees to give up 20 hours of the year to volunteer projects.

The Global Impact Challenge is an extension of the Global Impact Awards, $23 million award that Google gave out in December among seven non-profits using technology to solve world problems like clean water (charity:water) and endangered species (Consortium for the Barcode of Life).

A Google spokesperson says that the difference between that round of awards and this newest Global Impact Challenge is that the latter features a competitive element, with the prize open to any non-profit in the UK that chooses to apply. On the other hand, with the earlier grants, “there was no entry criteria, rather, [the] grants [were] awarded to exceptional orgs doing amazing things with tech.”

Or, as Brittin notes in a statement: “Over the years Google has sought to support great organisations that are using innovation and technology to improve the lives of millions around the world. With this new Challenge, non-profits will have the chance to make their own pitch for why they deserve the money.”

The spokesperson told TechCrunch that Google does not have any specific plans to extend the open competition model to other countries right now, “But would love to be able to roll the Challenge out if possible.”

As with Microsoft’s recent Windows 8 Apps for Social Good contest — outcome still TBA — Google’s initiative is a nice way of leveraging some of its profile, and a sliver of its profits, for something that’s been under-represented.

Yes, there have been a growing number of startups cropping up around the concept of social entrepreneurship — the socially-minded crowdfunding platform Rally.org being one example — and larger organizations like the Mozilla Foundation proving that non-profit does not have to equal weak. But on balance, these days, when you hear the phrase “social startup” you think more of Facebook, Twitter and social media than you do of charity and good causes.

For Google, this also comes at a time when the company is being scrutinized in Europe in a less flattering light.

Google has been embroiled in a three-year antitrust investigation by EU regulators over its search products, with opponents continuing to put on the heat for Google to change practices, while regulators have pushed back final decisions to August of this year. Google could be liable up to $5 billion in fines if it does not settle with regulators.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch